Religion Databases
- ATLA Religion Database This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive index to journal articles, book reviews, and collections of essays in all fields of religion. Also covers antiquities and archaeology, Bible, church history, ecumenism, ethics, missions, pastoral ministry, philosophy, religions and religious studies, theology. Dates of Coverage: 1949-to date
- ATLASerials, Religion Collection This link opens in a new window
Full text from more than 100 journals selected by leading religion scholars in the United States.
- Index to Jewish Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Indexes English-language articles, book reviews, and feature stories in more than 230 journals devoted to Jewish affairs. Covers Jewish and Middle Eastern culture, literature, history, politics, religion, and other areas of study. Dates of Coverage: 1988 to date
- RAMBI: The Index of Articles on Jewish Studies This link opens in a new windowIncludes scholarly articles in all disciplines from journals and collections of articles in English, Hebrew, Yiddish, and many European languages. Covers the various fields of Jewish studies and the study of the Southern Levant (roughly Israel, Palestinian territories, Jordan, and parts of Lebanon). Dates of Coverage: 1966 to date
- Religion and Philosophy Collection This link opens in a new window
Provides full text from more than 290 journals; covers world religions, major denominations, biblical studies, religious history, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of language, moral philosophy and the history of philosophy.
Multidisciplinary Databases
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Multidisciplinary - good for nearly all subjects. Scholarly and trade journals, popular magazines, newspapers, conference proceedings, book reviews, and more.
- Humanities International Complete This link opens in a new window
Index to journals, books and reference sources in all humanities disciplines, as well as selected original creative works including poems, fiction, photographs, and illustrations, with some content available full-text.
- Summon This link opens in a new windowSearches more than 300 million items - books, scholarly articles, newspaper articles, data, digital audio, digital video, digital images, government documents and more. It draws from the library catalog (OBIS), many of the full text and article indexing databases, as well as digital repositories from colleges, universities, research centers, and other open-access archives on the web.
- Web of Science This link opens in a new windowIncludes the Art & Humanities Citation Index and the Social Sciences Citation Index.
- Annual Reviews This link opens in a new windowCritically reviews the most significant research literature in over 40 focused disciplines within the fields of biomedical, life, physical, and social sciences. These reviews both summarize recent scholarly advances and prompt new research activity. Excellent database of in-depth, secondary sources.
Basic Database Search Techniques
| Concept | Explanation | Example |
| Phrase search (quotes required) |
search for an exact phrase (most, but not all, databases use quotation marks) | “death penalty” “standardized test” “reality TV” |
| Boolean logic (for keyword searching) | use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) for more precise searching |
See following examples |
| AND | search for records that have all of the words (narrows the search) |
race and poverty drug use and educational attainment |
| OR | search for records that have any of the words (broadens the search) |
homosexual or gay or lesbian or queer china or japan or korea |
| NOT | exclude records that have the word (narrows the search) | advertising not (TV or television) |
| Truncation | search for a root word with any ending (most, but not all, databases use an asterisk *) | adolescen* [finds adolescent, adolescents, adolescence] |
Additional Database Techniques
| Concept | Definition | Example |
| Complex Boolean Search | place search words for the same concept in the same search box (or in parentheses) |
(spous* or wife or wives or husband* or domestic partner*) and (abus* or batter* or violen*) |
| Proximity | require words to appear within a certain distance of each other n (for “near”) = words can appear in any order w (for “within”) = words must appear in specified order | poverty n4 mental health african w2 american* (n# and w# indicate the maximum number of intervening words) note: if no quotes or proximity connectors or are used, Ebsco defaults to w5 |
| Field qualification (field limiting) | require words to appear in a certain field in the database record (easy way: use dropdown menus) |
au coleman (for author field) ti racial profiling (for title field) |
| Limit (filter) | restrict search results to a subset of the database | e.g., by language, year of publication, type of publication |
| Add to folder | select or save records from search results for future action | save specified records to display, print, email, or add to bibliographic manager (e.g., RefWorks) later |
Finding Full Text
Many databases offered on the library's website include the full text of articles. Click on the pdf or html icon to download the article.
If full text is not available, click the Find It or 360 Link icons to see if there is access from another source. Look for:
or 
displayed for each item in the databases offered from the library's website. In Google Scholar, look for Find Full Text @ Oberlin. Access at publisher's websites is generally limited to subscribers.
Full-text is not always accessible for immediate download. The 360 Link may lead to an intermediary page that offers access through Interlibrary loan. If you have trouble, consult library staff.